Linen Clothes Quotes

LADY LAZARUS I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it-- A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?-- The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot-- The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. It's easy enough to do it in a cell. It's easy enough to do it and stay put. It's the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: 'A miracle!' That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart-- It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable, The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash-- You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there-- A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air. -- written 23-29 October 1962

To this point, he could not really have said that he loved William. Feel the terror of responsibility for him, yes. Carry thought of him like a gem in his pocket, certainly, reaching now and then to touch it, marveling. But now he felt the perfection of the tiny bones of William’s spine through his clothes, smooth as marbles under his fingers, smelled the scent of him, rich with the incense of innocence and the faint tang of shit and clean linen. And thought his heart would break with love.

The man now retrieved a linen cloth and stuffed it deep into Katherine’s mouth. “Death,” he whispered to her, “should be a quiet thing.

It is a traveler’s fallacy that one should shop for clothing while abroad. Those white linen tunics, so elegant in Greece, emerge from the suitcase as mere hippie rags; the beautiful striped shirts of Rome are confined to the closet; and the delicate hand batiks of Bali are first cruise wear, then curtains, then signs of impending madness.

The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts. The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed trough the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with coversation and laughter, the clatter and clamour one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of the night. If there had been music…but no, of curse there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained. Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. they drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing these they added a small, sullen silenceto the lager, hollow one. it made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint. The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone heart that held the heat of a long-dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. and it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a strech of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight. The man had true-red hair, red as flame. his eyes was dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things. The Waystone was is, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wapping the other inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.

Gwen smiled and asked hopefully, "Is there coffee again this morning?" Silvan put his book down and glanced absently at Gwen. His gaze dropped to her cleavage, and a single white brow shot up. He blinked several times. "There certainly is," Nell said, circling the table. She stopped behind Gwen and draped a linen cloth over her shoulders, so it tumbled from her neck like a bib. "Peel yer eyes off the lass's breasts," Nell said sweetly to Silvan. Gwen turned twenty shades of red, sneaked a hand beneath the bib, and tugged at her bodice, trying to jiggle them back down a little. Mortified, she devoted her attention to eyeing the medieval dining ware-plates and goblets made of heavy silver, a fat spoon and broad knife, and heavy blue bowls. "She's the one who fluffed them up," Silvan protested indignantly. "I didn't mean to look, but they were ... so ... there. Like trying not to see the sun in the sky." Nell arched a brow and circled round the table again. "I hardly think 'twas ye she fluffed 'em for, was it lass?" Gwen glanced up and gave an embarrassed shake of her head.

Beside the plain blue homespun and white linen which modestly clothed Aunt Rachel and Judith, Kit’s flowered silk gave her the look of some vivid tropical bird lighted by mistake on a strange shore.

In Sacramento it is fiery summer always, and you can gather roses, and eat strawberries and ice cream, and wear white linen clothes, and pant and perspire, at eight or nine o'clock in the morning, and then take the cars, and at noon put on your furs and your skates, and go skimming over frozen Donner Lake...There is transition for you! Where will you find another like it in the western hemisphere?

Swallowing hard, she looked at him. He raised his eyes from the frothy concoction on his spoon at the precise moment she looked up, and their gazes locked over the length of the polished wood table. Where would you drip whipped cream on him, Lisa? The answer came with frightening swiftness and conviction: Everywhere. She wanted to explore his body, the hard ripples, the smooth skin. The candlelight bathed his olive skin with a golden hue, and his dark good looks were set off perfectly by his linen shirt and the splash of black and crimson draped across his chest. He was mesmerizing. "Are you hungry, lass?" He licked his spoon languidly. She couldn't tear her gaze away. "No. I've eaten quite enough," she managed. "You seem to be watching my dessert most intently. Are you certain there isn't something else you wish to sate your appetite?" Besides you to remove your clothing, lie on the table, and let me finger paint you with whipped cream, you mean? "Nope," she said casually. "Not a thing." She watched him for a moment; he still had a great deal of dessert left. How was she going to get through this?

It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts. The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there had been music...but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained. Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. They drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing this they added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one. It made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint. The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. And it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight. The man had true-red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things. The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.

I stooped under the rude lintel, and there he sat upon a stone outside, his gray eyes dancing with amusement as they fell upon my astonished features. He was thin and worn, but clear and alert, his keen face bronzed by the sun and roughened by the wind. In his tweed suit and cloth cap he looked like any other tourist upon the moor, and he had contrived, with that catlike love of personal cleanliness which was one of his characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen as perfect as if he were in Baker Street.

Victorian rigidities were such that ladies were not even allowed to blow out candles in mixed company, as that required them to pucker their lips suggestively. They could not say that they were going "to bed"--that planted too stimulating an image--but merely that they were "retiring." It became effectively impossible to discuss clothing in even a clinical sense without resort to euphemisms. Trousers became "nether integuments" or simply "inexpressibles" and underwear was "linen." Women could refer among themselves to petticoats or, in hushed tones, stockings, but could mention almost nothing else that brushed bare flesh.

He felt something on his neck. Warmth. He hesitated, then turned weary eyes toward the sky. Sunlight bathed his face. He gaped; it seemed so long since he’d seen pure sunlight. It shone down through a large break in the clouds, comforting, like the warmth of an oven baking a loaf of Adrinne’s thick sourdough bread. Almen stood, raising a hand to shade his eyes. He took a deep, long breath, and smelled… apple blossoms? He spun with a start. The apple trees were flowering. That was plain ridiculous. He rubbed his eyes, but that didn’t dispel the image. They were blooming, all of them, white flowers breaking out between the leaves. [...] What was happening? Apple trees didn’t blossom twice. Was he going mad? Footsteps sounded softly on the path that ran past the orchard. Almen spun to find a tall young man walking down out of the foothills. He had deep red hair and he wore ragged clothing: a brown cloak with loose sleeves and a simple white linen shirt beneath. The trousers were finer, black with a delicate embroidery of gold at the cuff. “Ho, stranger,” Almen said, raising a hand, not knowing what else to say, not even sure if he’d seen what he thought he’d seen. “Did you… did you get lost up in the foothills?” The man stopped, turning sharply. He seemed surprised to find Almen there. With a start, Almen realized the man’s left arm ended in a stump. The stranger looked about, then breathed in deeply. “No. I’m not lost. Finally. It feels like a great long time since I’ve understood the path before me.

He wore clothes to cover his nakedness, he drove a car, and he ate with a knife and a fork and a linen napkin. He was gainfully employed in a job that required intellectual ability and acuity. He controlled his sexual urges through various civilized means and would never take a woman against her will. Nevertheless, as he stared at Miss Mitchell and Paul, he realized that he was an animal. Something primitive. Something feral. And something made him want to go over there and rip Paul’s hands from his body and carry Miss Mitchell off. To kiss her senseless, move his lips to her neck, and claim her.

...the women wear clothes of beet-dyed linen. It reminds me of our red ribbons. Maybe it's a symbol that they've bled...that they're open for business.

John saw only the linen cloths. He, Peter, also saw the linen cloths because we [Gentiles] do not reject the Old Testament, for as Luke says, "Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures" (Lk 24:45). But in addition Peter saw the napkin which had been on his head: "The head of Christ is God" (1 Cor 11:3). Thus to see the napkin which had been on the head of Jesus is to have faith in the divinity of Christ, which the Jews refused to accept. This napkin is described as not lying with the linen cloths, and rolled up, having a place by itself, because the divinity of Christ is covered over, and it is apart from every creature because of its excellence: "God who is over all be blessed for ever" (Rom 9:5); "Truly, you art a God who hides yourself" (Is 45:15).

As far as I could see, she didn't take any better care of her apparel than I did mine, but I owned shirts that looked like they'd been run through a car engine half an hour after I removed the price tags, and she had socks from high school that were still as white as palace linen. Women and their clothes often astounded me this way, but I figured it was one of those mysteries I'd never solve - like what really happened to Amelia Earhart or the bell that used to occupy our office.

To eat one's fill, eat until the exhaustion of the appetite, was the principal pleasure that the peasants dangled before their imagination, and one that they rarely realized in their lives. They [the peasants] also imagined other dreams coming true, including the standard run of castles and princesses. But their wishes usually remained fixed on common objects in the everyday world. One hero gets "a cow and some chickens"; another, an armoire full of linens. A third settles for light work, regular meals, and a pipe full of tobacco. And when gold rains into the fireplace of a fourth, he uses it to buy "food, clothes, a horse, land." In most of the tales, wish fulfillment turns into a program for survival, not a fantasy of escape.

She put an end to the custom of eating in the kitchen and whenever anyone was hungry, and she imposed the obligation of doing it at regular hours at the large table in the dining room, covered with a linen cloth and with silver candlesticks and table service.

Here,” said Autolycus, “is a settlement of curly-bearded, long-robed Assyrians, exiles from their country; and beyond stretches the land of the Chalybeans, a savage tribe famous as iron-workers, with whom I have lately traded. Soon we shall sight an islet, called the Isle of Barter, close to the Chalybean shore, where we of Sinope come in our dug-out canoes, and lay out on the rocks painted Minyan pottery and linen cloth from Colchis and sheepskin coats dyed red with madder or yellow with heather, such as the Chalybeans prize, and spear-shafts painted with vermilion. Then we row away out of sight behind rocks. As soon as we are gone, the Chalybeans venture across to the islet on rafts; they lay down beside our goods broad-bladed, well-tempered spear-heads and axe-heads, also awls and knives and sail-needles, and go away again. If on our return we are satisfied with their goods, we take them up and make for home; but if we are not satisfied, we remove apart from the rest of our merchandise whatever we think is not covered by their payment. The Chalybeans then return again and pay for this extra heap with a few more iron implements. In the end the barter is complete, unless the Chalybeans in a huff take away all their iron goods and let us sail off empty-handed; for they are a capricious race.

They left their encampment with dirt-covered linen strewn about the abandoned grounds amongst clothes, shoes, children’s toys and other discarded belongings. The handcart wheels crunched over them, and the dry wheels screamed as the Willie Company started for Zion.

[According to 1348 theorists, poisoning of Christian water by Jews was the cause of Black Death.] Even the poison used to contaminate the Christian water supply was described in meticulous detail. It was "about the size of an egg," except when it was the "size of a nut" or a "large nut," "a fist" or "two fists"- and it came packaged in "a leather pouch," except when it was packaged in "linen cloth," "a rag," or a "paper coronet"; and the poison was variously made from lizards, frogs, and spiders- when it was not made from the hearts of Christians and from Holy Communion wafers.

It was true that Al had asked her to move the jars and magazines, and there was probably a word for the way she'd stepped around those jars and magazines for the last eleven days, often nearly stumbling on them; maybe a psychiatric word with many syllables or maybe a simple word like "spite." But it seemed to her that he'd asked her to do more than "one thing" while he was gone. He'd also asked her to make the boys three meals a day, and clothe them and read to them and nurse them in sickness, and scrub the kitchen floor and wash the sheets and iron his shirts, and do it all without a husband's kisses or kind words. If she tried to get credit for these labors of hers, however, Al simply asked her whose labors had paid for the house and food and linens? Never mind that his work so satisfied him that he didn't need her love, while her chores so bored her that she needed his love doubly. In any rational accounting, his work canceled her work.

481 I went into the barbershop as usual, with the pleasant sensation of entering a familiar place, easily and naturally. New things are distressing to my sensibility; I’m at ease only in places where I’ve already been. After I’d sat down in the chair, I happened to ask the young barber, occupied in fastening a clean, cool cloth around my neck, about his older colleague from the chair to the right, a spry fellow who had been sick. I didn’t ask this because I felt obliged to ask something; it was the place and my memory that sparked the question. ‘He passed away yesterday,’ flatly answered the barber’s voice behind me and the linen cloth as his fingers withdrew from the final tuck of the cloth in between my shirt collar and my neck. The whole of my irrational good mood abruptly died, like the eternally missing barber from the adjacent chair. A chill swept over all my thoughts. I said nothing. Nostalgia! I even feel it for people and things that were nothing to me, because time’s fleeing is for me an anguish, and life’s mystery is a torture. Faces I habitually see on my habitual streets – if I stop seeing them I become sad. And they were nothing to me, except perhaps the symbol of all of life. The nondescript old man with dirty gaiters who often crossed my path at nine-thirty in the morning… The crippled seller of lottery tickets who would pester me in vain… The round and ruddy old man smoking a cigar at the door of the tobacco shop… The pale tobacco shop owner… What has happened to them all, who because I regularly saw them were a part of my life? Tomorrow I too will vanish from the Rua da Prata, the Rua dos Douradores, the Rua dos Fanqueiros. Tomorrow I too – I this soul that feels and thinks, this universe I am for myself – yes, tomorrow I too will be the one who no longer walks these streets, whom others will vaguely evoke with a ‘What’s become of him?’. And everything I’ve done, everything I’ve felt and everything I’ve lived will amount merely to one less passer-by on the everyday streets of some city or other.

What the hell is this stuff?" he muttered, frowning at the oily spot on the linen cloth. "Pearlman slathered it on me this morning." "It's macassar oil. Gentlemen use it to keep their hair neat. Nicholas used it," she added pointedly. "Well, tomorrow he's giving it up. I smell like a rotten apple." "You do not. And I think it looks rather nice." He sent her an incredulous look. "I look like an otter. And everything I put my head against gets greasy." "That's why someone invented the antimacassar," she told him, almost smiling. "The-aha!" He laughed as he made the connection. "Of course. First they invent something stupid, then something ugly to make up for it. We live in a wondrous age, Annie.

Jerrie Cobb reached down and pulled the heavy layers of arctic clothing over her navy blue linen dress.

It is a traveler’s fallacy that one should shop for clothing while abroad. Those white linen tunics, so elegant in Greece, emerge from the suitcase as mere hippie rags; the beautiful striped shirts of Rome are confined to the closet; and the delicate hand batiks of Bali are first cruise wear, then curtains, then signs of impending madness. And then there is Paris.

Countless Victorian-era engravings notwithstanding, the Pilgrims did not spend the day sitting around a long table draped with a white linen cloth, clasping each other’s hands in prayer as a few curious Indians looked on. Instead of an English affair, the First Thanksgiving soon became an overwhelmingly Native celebration when Massasoit and a hundred Pokanokets (more than twice the entire English population of Plymouth) arrived at the settlement with five freshly killed deer. Even if all the Pilgrims’ furniture was brought out into the sunshine, most of the celebrants stood, squatted, or sat on the ground as they clustered around outdoor fires, where the deer and birds turned on wooden spits and where pottages—stews into which varieties of meats and vegetables were thrown—simmered invitingly.

The indoor picnic had been laid out in an octagonal-shaped sunroom featuring an atrium set in the center of the stone floor. Here a "white garden" planted with white roses, snowy lilies, and silver magnolias gave off a delicious scent that drifted across the table laden with linen, crystal, and silver. The white linen cloth had been scattered with pink rose petals that matched the flowered Sevres china.

I kept thinking of them as dead feet. “There are dozens of linen handkerchiefs, that’s something,” said Rose. But I hated the handkerchiefs — and the gloves and the stockings; and a dreadful pair of broken-looking corsets. “People’s clothes ought to be buried with them,” I said. “They oughtn’t to be left behind to be despised.” “I’m not despising them,” said Rose. “Some of these suits are made of wonderful cloth.

At eight o'clock he fell asleep in a chair; and, having undressed him by unbuttoning every button in sight and, where there were no buttons, pulling till something gave, we carried him up to bed. Freddie stood looking at the pile of clothes on the floor with a sort of careworn wrinkle between his eyes, and I knew what he was thinking. To get the kid undressed had been simple - a mere matter of muscle. But how were we to get him into his clothes again? I stirred the heap with my foot. There was a long linen arrangement which might have been anything. Also a strip of pink flannel which was like nothing on earth. All most unpleasant.

We had a signal. When I turned the pail upside down by the kitchen house, that meant everything was clear. Mauma would open the window and throw down a taffy she stole from missus’ room. Sometimes here came a bundle of cloth scraps—real nice calicos, gingham, muslin, some import linen. One time, that true brass thimble. Her favorite thing to take was scarlet-red thread. She would wind it up in her pocket and walk right out the house with it.

It was one of the great pleasures of the age, to be safe and warm and dry - showered, deodorized, professionally clothed in espadrilles and a linen jacket, latte steaming up the radio display, taking in the world's troubles three minutes at a time. That was luxury.

He did not know how much time passed. He got up, ripped the canvas off the frame, threw it into a corner, and put on a new one. He mixed some paints, sat down, and began work. One starts with a hopeless struggle to follow nature, and everything goes wrong; one ends by calmly creating from one’s palette, and nature agrees with it and follows. On croit que j’imagine—ce n’est pas vrai—je me souviens. It was just as Pietersen had told him in Brussels; he had been too close to his models. He had not been able to get a perspective. He had been pouring himself into the mould of nature; now he poured nature into the mould of himself. He painted the whole thing in the colour of a good, dusty, unpeeled potato. There was the dirty, linen table cloth, the smoky wall, the lamp hanging down from the rough rafters, Stien serving her father with steamed potatoes, the mother pouring the black coffee, the brother lifting a cup to his lips, and on all their faces the calm, patient acceptance of the eternal order of things. The sun rose and a bit of light peered into the storeroom window. Vincent got up from his stool. He felt perfectly calm and peaceful. The twelve days’ excitement was gone. He looked at his work. It reeked of bacon, smoke, and potato steam. He smiled. He had painted his Angelus. He had captured that which does not pass in that which passes. The Brabant peasant would never die.

An American gentleman in the after-cabin, who had been wrapped up in fur and oilskin the whole passage, unexpectedly appeared in a very shiny, tall, black hat, and constantly overhauled a very little valise of pale leather, which contained his clothes, linen, brushes, shaving apparatus, books, trinkets, and other baggage. He likewise stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and walked the deck with his nostrils dilated, as already inhaling the air of Freedom which carries death to all tyrants, and can never (under any circumstances worth mentioning) be breathed by slaves.

The institution of long apprenticeships can give no security that insufficient workmanship shall not frequently be exposed to public sale. When this is done, it is generally the effect of fraud, and not of inability; and the longest apprenticeship can give no security against fraud. Quite different regulations are necessary to prevent this abuse. The sterling mark upon plate, and the stamps upon linen and woollen cloth, give the purchaser much greater security than any statute of apprenticeship. He generally looks at these, but never thinks it worth while to enquire whether the workman had served a seven years apprenticeship.

What they did not know was that she chafed at the never-endingness of it. No sooner had she cleaned one surface than it was dirty again. Clothes, even those barely worn, found themselves in crumpled heaps in linen baskets so that she yelled at Kitty and Thierry, hating her shrewish voice. Once, bored to within an inch of her sanity by the act of hanging out yet another lineful, she had simply turned, dropped the basket and walked straight into the lake, pausing only to remove her shoes. The water had been so shockingly cold that it had knocked the breath from her chest, and left her laughing for the sheer joy of feeling something.

Designer Kisses" I’m glum about your sportive flesh in the empire of blab, and the latest guy running his trendy tongue like a tantalizing surge over your molars, how droll. Love by a graveyard is redundant, but the skin is an obstacle course like Miami where we are inescapably consigned: tourists keeping the views new. What as yet we desire, our own fonts of adoration. By morning, we’re laid out like liquid timepieces, each other’s exercise in perpetual enchantment, for there is that beach in us that is untranslatable; footprints abound. I understand: you’re at a clothes rack at Saks lifting a white linen blouse at tear’s edge wondering.

His fingers went to the buttons of his jacket, and her mouth dried. His buttons were simple cloth and metal affairs, scarcely worth a second thought. And yet as he undid them, she had second thoughts and third thoughts, none of them proper. His gloved fingers were long and graceful, and every button he undid revealed another inch of creamy linen, one that hinted at broad shoulders and strong muscles. He’d not shown her the slightest bit of skin, but the act of unbuttoning his coat sparked indecent thoughts—memories of his arm coming around her, his mouth on hers… He stopped undoing buttons, and she realized he’d only wanted to reach the inside pocket. She sat back in disappointment.

There's a fortune of Authentic Vintage French Linen Tea Towels on every clothes line. These are the exact kind of linens that specialty shops in America sell for top dollar to affluent customers who pay dearly to add that touch of French Farmhouse Fabulousness to their million-dollar McMansions. Flaubert is so wrong. Even wash day in Normandy is achingly chic.

You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole yield be forfeited, [1] the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard. 10You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. 11You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together. 12 y“You shall make yourself tassels on the four corners of the garment with which you cover yourself.

If you want waiters in tuxedos with white linen cloths over their arms, menus with unpronounceable words all over them, and high-priced wines served in silver ice buckets when you go out for Italian food, our little restaurant is not the place to come. But if you mostly want good, solid, home-cooked pasta with tasty sauces made with real vegetables and spices by a real Italian Mama and will trade white linen for red-and-white checked plastic tablecloths, you'll like our place just fine. If you're okay with a choice of just two wines, red or white, we'll give you as much of it as you want, from our famous bottomless wine bottle — free with your dinner. This restaurant owner took competitive disadvantages and turned them into a good, solid, “fun” selling story.

I got back from the University late in the afternoon, had a quick swim, ate my dinner, and bolted off to the Stanton house to see Adam. I saw him sitting out on the galley reading a book (Gibbon, I remember) in the long twilight. And I saw Anne. I was sitting in the swing with Adam, when she came out the door. I looked at her and knew that it had been a thousand years since I had last seen her back at Christmas when she had been back at the Landing on vacation from Miss Pound's School. She certainly was not now a little girl wearing round-toed, black patent-leather, flat-heeled slippers held on by a one-button strap and white socks held up by a dab of soap. She was wearing a white linen dress, cut very straight, and the straightness of the cut and the stiffness of the linen did nothing in the world but suggest by a kind of teasing paradox the curves and softnesses sheathed by the cloth. She had her hair in a knot on the nape of her neck, and a little white ribbon around her head, and she was smiling at me with a smile which I had known all my life but which was entirely new, and saying, 'Hello, Jack,' while I held her strong narrow hand in mine and knew that summer had come.

The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor. But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary … You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals. You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs. My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species.

Now her hair is like the nights of disunion and separation and her face like the days of union and delectation; She hath a nose like the edge of the burnished blade and cheeks like purple wine or anemones blood-red: her lips as coral and carnelian shine and the water of her mouth is sweeter than old wine; its taste would quench Hell's fiery pain. Her tongue is moved by wit of high degree and ready repartee: her breast is a seduction to all that see it (glory be to Him who fashioned it and finished it!); and joined thereto are two upper arms smooth and rounded; She hath breasts like two globes of ivory, from whose brightness the moons borrow light, and a stomach with little waves as it were a figured cloth of the finest Egyptian linen made by the Copts, with creases like folded scrolls, ending in a waist slender past all power of imagination; based upon back parts like a hillock of blown sand, that force her to sit when she would fief stand, and awaken her, when she fain would sleep, And those back parts are upborne by thighs smooth and round and by a calf like a column of pearl, and all this reposeth upon two feet, narrow, slender and pointed like spear-blades, the handiwork of the Protector and Requiter, I wonder how, of their littleness, they can sustain what is above them.

I suppose… I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. But knowing what I do of your past… I assumed…” Her lame attempt at an apology seemed to erode the remnants of Sebastian’s self-control. “Well, your assumption was wrong! If you haven’t yet noticed, I’m busier than the devil in a high wind, every minute of the day. I don’t have the damned time for a tumble. And if I did—” He stopped abruptly. All semblance of the elegant viscount Evie had once watched from afar in Lord Westcliff’s drawing room had vanished. He was rumpled and bruised and furious. And he wasn’t breathing at all well. “If I did—” He broke off again, a flush crossing the crests of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. Evie saw the exact moment when his self-restraint snapped. Alarm jolted through her, and she lurched toward the closed door. Before she had even made a step, she found herself seized and pinned against the wall by his body and hands. The smell of sweat-dampened linen and healthy, aroused male filled her nostrils. Once he had caught her, Sebastian pressed his parted lips against the thin skin of her temple. His breath snagged. Another moment of stillness. Evie felt the electrifying touch of his tongue at the very tip of her eyebrow. He breathed against the tiny wet spot, a waft of hellfire that sent chills through her entire body. Slowly he brought his mouth to her ear, and traced the intricate inner edges. His whisper seemed to come from the darkest recesses of her own mind. “If I did, Evie… then by now I would have shredded your clothes with my hands and teeth until you were naked. By now I would have pushed you down to the carpet, and put my hands beneath your breasts and lifted them up to my mouth. I would be kissing them… licking them… until the tips were like hard little berries, and then I would bite them so gently…” Evie felt herself drift into a slow half swoon as he continued in a ragged murmur. “… I would kiss my way down to your thighs… inch by inch… and when I reached those sweet red curls, I would lick through them, deeper and deeper, until I found the little pearl of your clitoris… and I would rest my tongue on it until I felt it throb. I would circle it, and stroke it… I’d lick until you started to beg. And then I would suck you. But not hard. I wouldn’t be that kind. I would do it so lightly, so tenderly, that you would start screaming with the need to come… I would put my tongue inside you… taste you… eat you. I wouldn’t stop until your entire body was wet and shaking. And when I had tortured you enough, I would open your legs and come inside you, and take you… take you…” Sebastian stopped, anchoring her against the wall while they both remained frozen, aroused, panting. At length, he spoke in a nearly inaudible voice. “You’re wet, aren’t you?” Had it been physically possible to blush any harder, Evie would have. Her skin burned with violated modesty as she understood what he was asking. She tipped her chin in the tiniest of nods. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything on this earth.

At one-thirty in the deep dark morning, the cooking odors blew up through the windy corridors of the house. Down the stairs, one by one, came women in curlers, men in bathrobes, to tiptoe and peer into the kitchen- lit only by fitful gusts of red fire from the hissing stove. And there in the black kitchen at two of a warm summer morning, Grandma floated like an apparition, amidst bangings and clatterings, half blind once more, her fingers groping instinctively in the dimness, shaking out spice clouds over bubbling pots and simmering kettles, her face in the firelight red, magical, and enchanted as she seized and stirred and poured the sublime foods. Quiet, quiet, the boarders laid the best linens and gleaming silver and lit candles rather than switch on electric lights and snap the spell. Grandfather, arriving home from a late evening's work at the printing office, was startled to hear grace being said in the candlelit dining room. As for the food? The meats were deviled, the sauces curried, the greens mounded with sweet butter, the biscuits splashed with jeweled honey; everything toothsome, luscious, and so miraculously refreshing that a gentle lowing broke out as from a pasturage of beasts gone wild in clover. One and all cried out their gratitude for their loose-fitting night clothes.

Wine, furniture, music, horses, and linen consumed Jefferson’s resources. “For the articles of household furniture, clothes, and a carriage … I have been obliged to anticipate my salary from which however I shall never be able to repay it,” Jefferson wrote to Monroe.21 “I will pray you to touch this string, which I know to be a tender one with Congress, with the utmost delicacy. I’d rather be ruined in my fortune, than in their esteem.” He

Mr. Brock’s account of his adventure in London has given the reader some short notice of his friend, Mr Macshane. Neither the wits nor the principles of that worthy Ensign were particularly firm: for drink, poverty, and a crack on the skull at the battle of Steenkirk had served to injure the former; and the Ensign was not in his best days possessed of any share of the latter. He had really, at one period, held such a rank in the army, but pawned his half-pay for drink and play; and for many years past had lived, one of the hundred thousand miracles of our city, upon nothing that anybody knew of, or of which he himself could give any account. Who has not a catalogue of these men in his list? who can tell whence comes the occasional clean shirt, who supplies the continual means of drunkenness, who wards off the daily-impending starvation? Their life is a wonder from day to day: their breakfast a wonder; their dinner a miracle; their bed an interposition of Providence. If you and I, my dear sir, want a shilling tomorrow, who will give it us? Will OUR butchers give us mutton-chops? will OUR laundresses clothe us in clean linen? — not a bone or a rag. Standing as we do (may it be ever so) somewhat removed from want,[*] is there one of us who does not shudder at the thought of descending into the lists to combat with it, and

In every improved society, the farmer is generally nothing but a farmer; the manufacturer, nothing but a manufacturer. The labour, too, which is necessary to produce any one complete manufacture is almost always divided among a great number of hands. How many different trades are employed in each branch of the linen and woollen manufactures from the growers of the flax and the wool, to the bleachers and smoothers of the linen, or to the dyers and dressers of the cloth!

and reaches out her hands to the needy. 21 She is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet. [6] 22 She makes bed coverings for herself; her clothing is fine linen and purple. 23 Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land. 24 She makes linen garments and sells them; she delivers sashes to the merchant. 25 Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. 26 She opens her mouth with wisdom,

I have endured everything: hunger and thirst, want of money, want of clothes, of shoes, of linen, every cruelty that penury can inflict. I have blown on my frozen fingers in that pickle-jar of great men, which I should like to see again, now, with you. I worked through a whole winter, seeing my head steam, and perceiving the atmosphere of my own moisture as we see that of horses on a frosty day. I do not know where a man finds the fulcrum that enables him to hold out against such a life.

Perhaps no word in English has undergone more transformations in its lifetime than ‘toilet’. Originally, in about 1540, it was a kind of cloth, a diminutive form of ‘toile’, a word still used to describe a type of linen. Then it became a cloth for use on dressing tables. Then it became the items on the dressing table (whence ‘toiletries’). Then it became the dressing table itself, then the act of dressing, then the act of receiving visitors while dressing, then the dressing room itself, then any kind of private room near a bedroom, then a room used lavatorially, and finally the lavatory itself. Which explains why ‘toilet water’ in English can describe something you would gladly daub on your face or, simultaneously, ‘water in a toilet’. Garderobe, a word now extinct, went through a similar but slightly more compacted transformation. A combination of ‘guard’ and ‘robe’, it first signified a storeroom, then any private room, then (briefly) a bed-chamber and finally a privy.

It must be confessed, however, that he still retained Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 43 from his former possessions six silver knives and forks and a soup-ladle, which Madame Magloire contemplated every day with delight, as they glistened splendidly upon the coarse linen cloth. And since we are now painting the Bishop of D—— as he was in reality, we must add that he had said more than once, ‘I find it difficult to renounce eating from silver dishes.’ To this silverware must be added two large candlesticks of massive silver, which he had inherited from a great-aunt. These candlesticks held two wax candles, and usually figured on the Bishop’s chimney-piece. When he had any one to dinner, Madame Magloire lighted the two candles and set the candlesticks on the table. In the Bishop’s own chamber, at the head of his bed, there was a small cupboard, in which Madame Magloire locked up the six silver knives and forks and the big spoon every night. But it is necessary to add, that the key was never removed.

The second boy, Pavlusha, had dishevelled black hair, grey eyes, broad cheekbones, a pale, pock-marked complexion, a large but well-formed mouth, an enormous head – as big as a barrel, as they say – and a thick-set, ungainly body. Hardly a prepossessing figure – there’s no denying that! – but I none the less took a liking to him: he had direct, very intelligent eyes and a voice with the ring of strength in it. His clothes gave him no chance of showing off: they consisted of no more than a simple linen shirt and much-patched trousers.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another woman sitting over in a wing chair, a pleasantly attractive lady wearing the tasteful clothes of a senior redactrice, or senior civil servant, the stylish black skirt, the dark stockings, the black pumps, and the starched white linen blouse of her caste. The dark hair was swept up in a chignon, elegant and functional, dark eyes glistened as she smiled at him in a professional manner. He could see that she was a woman who met men in a highly assured way—serene, and expert at creating a proper distance.

Her fingers clawed uselessly at his clothes as her desire escalated to near madness. Simon invaded her in deep lunges, his rhythm insistent, until rapture shot and echoed through both of them, and their lungs pulled in drafts of air laden with the scent of clean, pressed linen, and their entwined limbs tightened as if to trap the sensation between them. “Damn,” Simon muttered a few minutes later, when he was able to catch his breath. “What?” Annabelle whispered, her head resting heavily against his coat lapel. “For the rest of my life, the smell of starch is going to make me hard.

<...> slaves became the major form of Southern wealth (aside from land), and slaveholding became the means to prosperity. <...> The later impoverishment of the South nourished the myth that the slave economy had always been historically “backward,” stagnating, and unproductive. We now know that investment in slaves brought a considerable profit and that the Southern economy grew rapidly throughout the pre–Civil War decades. It is true, however, that the system depended largely on the international demand for cotton as the world entered the age of industrialization, led by the British textile industry. There was an increasing demand for clothing that was cheaper than linen and not as hot and heavy as wool.

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage—— My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. Before they came the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. They concentrate my attention, that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself. The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health. --"Tulips", written 18 March 1961

In 1846 Easter fell on the same date in the Latin and Greek Orthodox calendars, so the holy shrines were much more crowded than usual, and the mood was very tense. The two religious communities had long been arguing about who should have first right to carry out their Good Friday rituals on the altar of Calvary inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the spot where the cross of Jesus was supposed to have been inserted in the rock. During recent years the rivalry between the Latins and the Greeks had reached such fever pitch that Mehmet Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem, had been forced to position soldiers inside and outside the church to preserve order. But even this had not prevented fights from breaking out. On this Good Friday the Latin priests arrived with their white linen altar-cloth to find that the Greeks had got there first with their silk embroidered cloth. The Catholics demanded to see the Greeks’ firman, their decree from the Sultan in Constantinople, empowering them to place their silk cloth on the altar first. The Greeks demanded to see the Latins’ firman allowing them to remove it. A fight broke out between the priests, who were quickly joined by monks and pilgrims on either side. Soon the whole church was a battlefield. The rival groups of worshippers fought not only with their fists, but with crucifixes, candlesticks, chalices, lamps and incense-burners, and even bits of wood which they tore from the sacred shrines. The fighting continued with knives and pistols smuggled into the Holy Sepulchre by worshippers of either side. By the time the church was cleared by Mehmet Pasha’s guards, more than forty people lay dead on the floor.1

The Archbishop [Thomas Becket] was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on the evening of the twenty-ninth of December. The body lay in the Cathedral all night, and was prepared for burial on the following day. The Archbishop was dressed in an extraordinary collection of clothes. He had on a large brown mantle; under it, a white surplice; below that, a lamb’s-wool coat; then another woolen coat; and a third woolen coat below this; under this, there was the black, cowled robe of the Benedictine Order; under this, a shirt; and next to the body, a curious haircloth, covered with linen. As the body grew cold, the vermin that were living in this multiple covering started to crawl out, and as MacArthur quotes the chronicler: ‘The vermin boiled over like water in a simmering cauldron, and the onlookers burst into alternate weeping and laughter.

Unsure what she was doing, she simply emulated his actions, allowing her tongue to tangle with his. It brought a growl from his throat that made her shiver, and then his kiss became hungrier and deeper, almost violent as his hands began moving, caressing her everywhere. He kneaded her back, urging her flush against him again, then let his fingers slide over her arms, and her sides, before his hands suddenly clasped her waist and he lifted and turned her to straddle him. The moment he'd settled her there, his hands shifted down and around to clasp her bottom. He then squeezed her cheeks through her gown, his fingers meeting in the middle and brushing against her core through the cloth. Claray gasped into his mouth at the touch and began to suck frantically on his tongue in response. When he released her bottom to tug at the top of her gown, dragging it off her shoulders, she let her hands drop to help him. The moment the wet cloth slid away to pool around her in the water, his hands claimed her breasts through the thin cloth of her shift. Claray broke their kiss on a cry at the touch, her hands grasping at his upper arms and then moving down to his wrists, urging him on. She looked down then to see that the thin linen of her shift had gone almost transparent. She could see the pink of her breasts and the darker rose of her nipples as his fingers squeezed the full globes and his thumbs ran back and forth over her hard, excited nipples. Watching him touch her so intimately only added to Claray's excitement and she found herself shifting in his lap, mindlessly rubbing herself against the hardness she could feel beneath her. When the Wolf gasped in response and claimed her mouth again, she kissed him frantically back and continued to move against him until he suddenly released her breasts and rolled them in the water. Only his hand under her neck kept her head from being submerged. Distracting her with kisses, the Wolf dragged her closer to shore until her head was out of the water and then broke their kiss to move upright. Kneeling with his legs in either side of her he then let his eyes slide over her, hot and hungry.

No, the most noticeable feature about the man was his clothes. In no way could it have been guessed of what his coat was made, for both its sleeves and its skirts were so ragged and filthy as to defy description, while instead of two posterior tails, there dangled four of those appendages, with, projecting from them, a torn newspaper. Also, around his neck there was wrapped something which might have been a stocking, a garter, or a stomacher, but was certainly not a tie. In short, had Chichikov chanced to encounter him at a church door, he would have bestowed upon him a copper or two (for, to do our hero justice, he had a sympathetic heart and never refrained from presenting a beggar with alms), but in the present case there was standing before him, not a mendicant, but a landowner — and a landowner possessed of fully a thousand serfs, the superior of all his neighbours in wealth of flour and grain, and the owner of storehouses, and so forth, that were crammed with homespun cloth and linen, tanned and undressed sheepskins, dried fish, and every conceivable species of produce. Nevertheless, such a phenomenon is rare in Russia, where the tendency is rather to prodigality than to parsimony.

I don't have the damned time for a tumble. And if I did---" He stopped abruptly. All semblance of the elegant viscount Evie had once watched from afar in Lord Westcliff's drawing room had vanished. He was rumpled and bruised and furious. And he wasn't breathing at all well. "If I did--" He broke off again, a flush crossing the crests of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. Evie saw the exact moment when his self-restraint snapped. Alarm jolted through her, and she lurched toward the closed door. Before she had even made a step, she found herself seized and pinned against the wall by his body and hands. The smell of sweat-dampened linen and healthy, aroused male filled her nostrils. Once he had caught her, Sebastian pressed his parted lips against the thin skin of her temple. His breath snagged. Another moment of stillness. Evie felt the electrifying touch of his tongue at the very tip of her eyebrow. He breathed against the tiny wet spot, a waft of hellfire that sent chills through her entire body. Slowly he brought his mouth to her ear, and traced the intricate inner edges. His whisper seemed to come from the darkest recesses of her own mind. "If I did, Evie... then by now I would have shredded your clothes with my hands and teeth until you were naked. By now I would have pushed you down to the carpet, and put my hands beneath your breasts and lifted them up to my mouth. I would be kissing them... licking them... until the tips were like hard little berries, and then I would bite them so gently..." Evie felt herself drift into a slow half swoon as he continued in a ragged murmur. "... I would kiss my way down to your thighs... inch by inch... and when I reached those sweet red curls, I would lick through them, deeper and deeper, until I found the little pearl of your clitoris... and I would rest my tongue on it until I felt it throb. I would circle it, and stroke it... I'd lick until you started to beg. And then I would suck you. But not hard. I wouldn't be that kind. I would do it so lightly, so tenderly, that you would start screaming with the need to come... I would put my tongue inside you... taste you... eat you. I wouldn't stop until your entire body was wet and shaking. And when I had tortured you enough, I would open your legs and come inside you, and take you... take you..." Sebastian stopped, anchoring her against the wall while they both remained frozen, aroused, panting. At length, he spoke in a nearly inaudible voice. "You're wet, aren't you?

Marlboro Man was out of town, on a trip to the southern part of the state, looking at farm ground, the night I began conceiving of the best way to arrange the reception menu. I was splayed on my bed in sweats, staring at the ceiling, when suddenly I gave birth to The Idea: one area of the country club would be filled with gold bamboo chairs, architecturally arranged orchids and roses, and antique lace table linens. Violins would serenade the guests as they feasted on cold tenderloin and sipped champagne. Martha Stewart would be present in spirit and declare, “This is my daughter, whom I love. In her I am well pleased.” Martha’s third cousin Mabel would prefer the ballroom on the other end of the club, however, which would be the scene of an authentic chuck wagon spread: barbecue, biscuits and gravy, fried chicken, Coors Light. Blue-checkered tablecloths would adorn the picnic tables, a country band would play “All My Exes Live in Texas,” and wildflowers would fill pewter jugs throughout the room. I smiled, imagining the fun. In one fell swoop, our two worlds--Marlboro Man’s country and my country club--would collide, combine, and unite in a huge, harmonious feast, one that would officially usher in my permanent departure from city life, cappuccino, and size 6 clothes.

She went alone to the vast room where the second-hand clothes were kept. Later, she thought it the happiest hour of her life. There were silks and brocades by the yard, and pile upon pile of hats, wigs, cloaks, and masks. After two years in wretched rags, even the linen shifts felt as soft as thistledown. She whirled from one delight to another- clutching lace, burying her nose in furs, holding flashy paste jewels next to her new-bleached skin. Catching her reflected eye in the mirror she laughed out loud, her red mouth wide and knowing. She put aside a few carefully-chosen costumes and elbow-length mittens. Then, finally, she chose a few costumes of a particular nature: shiny satin, ebony black. Lastly, she gathered the garments she would wear for her journey: a grass-green woolen gown and a lace cap and apron. The effect was somewhat grand for a domestic servant. Her auburn locks were pinned tightly, her figure flattered by a frilled muslin kerchief, crisscrossed in an 'X' over her breast. Pulling out a few auburn tendrils from her cap, she adjusted her bodice to show a little more flesh. Then she grew very still, and smiled slowly into the empty space before her. "How do you do, sir," she said with a graceful curtsy. "Now, what pretty dish might you care for tonight?

Only as a young man playing pool all night for money had he been able to find what he wanted in life, and then only briefly. People thought pool hustling was corrupt and sleazy, worse than boxing. But to win at pool, to be a professional at it, you had to deliver. In a business you could pretend that skill and determination had brought you along, when it had only been luck and muddle. A pool hustler did not have the freedom to believe that. There were well-paid incompetents everywhere living rich lives. They arrogated to themselves the plush hotel suites and Lear Jets that America provided for the guileful and lucky far more than it did for the wise. You could fake and bluff and luck your way into all of it. Hotel suites overlooking Caribbean private beaches. Bl*wj*bs from women of stunning beauty. Restaurant meals that it took four tuxedoed waiters to serve, with the sauces just right. The lamb or duck in tureen sliced with precise and elegant thinness, sitting just so on the plate, the plate facing you just so on the heavy white linen, the silver fork heavy gleaming in your manicured hand below the broad cloth cuff and mother of pearl buttons. You could get that from luck and deceit even while causing the business or the army or the government that supported you to do poorly at what it did. The world and all its enterprises could slide downhill through stupidity and bad faith. But the long gray limousines would still hum through the streets of New York, of Paris, of Moscow, of Tokyo. Though the men who sat against the soft leather in back with their glasses of 12-year-old scotch might be incapable of anything more than looking important, of wearing the clothes and the hair cuts and the gestures that the world, whether it liked to or not, paid for, and always had paid for. Eddie would lie in bed sometimes at night and think these things in anger, knowing that beneath the anger envy lay like a swamp. A pool hustler had to do what he claimed to be able to do. The risks he took were not underwritten. His skill on the arena of green cloth, cloth that was itself the color of money, could never be only pretense. Pool players were often cheats and liars, petty men whose lives were filled with pretensions, who ran out on their women and walked away from their debts. But on the table with the lights overhead beneath the cigarette smoke and the silent crowd around them in whatever dive of a billiard parlor at four in the morning, they had to find the wherewithal inside themselves to do more than promise excellence. Under whatever lies might fill the life, the excellence had to be there, it had to be delivered. It could not be faked. But Eddie did not make his living that way anymore.

The leader of the Red Guards stepped up to Nien Cheng. “We are the Red Guards. We have come to take revolutionary action against you!” Nien Cheng held up the copy of the Constitution and looked the leader in the eye. “It’s against the Constitution to enter a private house without a search warrant.” The man grabbed the Constitution out of Nien’s hand and threw it on the floor. “The Constitution is abolished. It was a document written by the Revisionists within the Communist Party. We recognize only the teachings of our Great Leader Chairman Mao.” One of the Red Guards took the stick he was carrying and smashed the mirror hanging over a wooden chest in the entryway. Another guard replaced the mirror with a blackboard that bore a quotation from Mao: “When the enemies with guns are annihilated, the enemies without guns still remain. We must not belittle these enemies.”2 With that, the young guards tore through the house, smashing furniture, dumping shelves of books onto the floor, slashing priceless paintings by Lin Fengmian and Qi Baishi. On a rampage, the eager students looted the closets and drawers, tearing most of Nien Cheng’s clothing and linens. They overturned the bed mattresses and hacked them to pieces. Then they smashed her music recordings. Pressing on, they found the food pantry and dumped flour, sugar, and canned goods onto the ravaged clothing. They broke several bottles of red wine, pouring it over the mess.

Bruno reappeared with two baskets swathed in white linen napkins and a ramekin of something bright yellow. Thatcher unveiled one basket. "Pretzel bread," he said. He held up a thick braid of what looked to be soft pretzel, nicely tanned, sprinkled with coarse salt. "This is served with Fee's homemade mustard. So right away the guest knows this isn't a run-of-the-mill restaurant. They're not getting half a cold baguette here, folks, with butter in the gold foil wrapper. This is warm pretzel bread made on the premises, and the mustard ditto. Nine out of ten tables are licking the ramekin clean." He handed the bread basket to a waiter with a blond ponytail (male- everyone at the table was male except for Adrienne, Caren, and the young bar back who was hanging on to Duncan's arm). The ponytailed waiter- name?- tore off a hunk of bread and dipped it in the mustard. He rolled his eyes like he was having an orgasm. The appropriate response, Adrienne thought. But remembering her breakfast she guessed he wasn't faking it. "The other basket contains our world-famous savory doughnuts," Thatcher said. He whipped the cloth off like a magician, revealing six golden-brown doughnuts. Doughnuts? Adrienne had been too nervous to think about eating all day, but now her appetite was roused. After the menu meeting, they were going to have family meal. The doughnuts were deep-fried rings of a light, yeasty, herb-flecked dough. Chive, basil, rosemary. Crisp on the outside, soft on the inside. Savory doughnuts. Who wouldn't stand in line for these? Who wouldn't beg or steal to access the private phone line so that they could make a date with these doughnuts?

Christopher dressed her in his shirt, surrounding her in soft white linen that retained the scent of his body. “I should put on my own clothes and go home,” Beatrix said. “My family knows I’m here with you unchaperoned. And even they have their limits.” “You’ll stay the rest of the afternoon,” Christopher said evenly. “You’re not going to invade my house, have your way with me, and dash off as if I were some errand you had to take care of.” “I’ve had a busy day,” she protested. “I’ve fallen from a horse, and seduced you, and now I’m bruised and sore all over.” “I’ll take care of you.” Christopher looked down at her, his expression stern. “Are you going to argue with me?” Beatrix tried to sound meek. “No, sir.” A slow smile crossed his face. “That was the worst attempt at obedience I’ve ever seen.” “Let’s practice,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Give me an order and see if I don’t follow it.” “Kiss me.” She pressed her mouth to his, and there was silence for a long time afterward. His hands slipped beneath the shirt, tormenting gently until she pressed herself against him. Her insides felt molten, and she weakened all over, wanting him. “Upstairs,” he said against her lips, and picked her up, carrying her as if she weighed nothing. Beatrix blanched as they approached the door. “You can’t take me upstairs like this.” “Why not?” “I’m only wearing your shirt.” “That doesn’t matter. Turn the doorknob.” “What if one of the servants should see?” Amusement flickered in his eyes. “Now you’re worried about propriety? Open the damned door, Beatrix.” She complied and kept her eyes tightly closed as he carried her upstairs. If any of the servants saw them, no one said a word.

The wedding of David and Michal was a glorious affair. Though Saul was normally stingy with his money, he was not so with his daughters. Michal had started the day with a bath followed by a bodily anointing of oil. She wore a linen and silk dress with embroidered cloth of Phoenician purple. Her hair was brushed to a soft perfection and placed beneath her Tyrian style crown of gold. She was bedecked with gold and silver jewelry from Egypt. Bracelets, necklaces, ear coverings and a ring on her nose. She walked through the Gibeah streets in fine calf leather sandals, surrounded by a cadre of dozens of virgin bridesmaid companions dressed in white linen. A band of minstrels led her with rejoicing on tambourine, flute, and lyre. She felt like a queen. She would be a queen one day. She knew that she was marrying the mightiest warrior in all of Israel. The gibborim who had killed the giant Rephaim Philistine, who her own father, the anointed warrior king, could not conquer. All she could think of the entire journey to the palace were the lyrics she first heard her from the lips of her bridegroom upon their first acquaintance. She had never forgot them. They were burned into her heart. He had sung a song of virginal submission to a manly king as a sample of his musical talent to her father. But she knew he had sung those words for her. She knew by the look in his eyes, his unquenchable stare of desire for her. It was like a prophecy. Now those words were coming true, she was going to be living them out any moment. Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear: forget your people and your father’s house, and the king will desire your beauty. Since he is your lord, bow to him. The people of Israel lined the streets and cheered their beautiful princess as she approached the entranceway to the palace. She could feel her heart pounding out of her chest. Would he sing to her on their wedding night? Would he seduce her with his musical talent before he ravished her? All glorious is the princess in her chamber, with robes interwoven with gold. In many-colored robes she is led to the king, with her virgin companions following behind her. With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king.

She said, “Why can’t you see that people care for you?” She said, “I care for you.” “I know that you care. But…” He searched her face. “Anyone would, for a friend.” “You’re more than a friend.” “On the battlefield, you stayed--” “Of course I did.” “You have a strong sense of honor. You always have. I think you think you owe me something.” “I stayed because I love you.” He flinched and looked away. “You don’t mean that.” “Yes, I do.” The night outside seemed to swell against the tent. The lamp smelled like a hot stone. His face slowly opened. He touched her hand as it pressed against his heart. His caress was light, secret, almost unsure of her knuckles, the thin tendons as strong as bone. She felt him become sure. There was no sound when he kissed her. None when she unthreaded the ties of his shirt and found his skin. He grasped her dagger belt, flexed his fingers once around the leather, then simply held on. He whispered something into her mouth that was almost a word. It lost its shape, became something else. He let go. She heard the brush of linen as he drew the shirt over his head, his fingertips grazing the tent’s sloped ceiling as if for balance. His ribs were bound with gauze, his body marked by scars. Old ones, badly healed and raised. Others, pink and fresh. His shoulders bore pale gouges; they looked like sets of claws, almost deliberate, like tattoos. Curious, she touched them. He bit his lip. “That hurts?” “No.” “What is this? What happened?” “I’ll tell you,” he said. “Later.” His hand strayed over her shirt, which was eastern, as Arin’s was, with no collar. Threadbare in places. Frayed at the neck. He worried the cloth there, rubbing it between fingers and thumb. Then he drew her shirt open, and she felt as if reality had grown larger and tremulous: a drop of water on the point of a pin. “Kestrel…I’ve never--” She whispered that this was new for her, too. There was a long pause. “Are you certain you want--” “Yes.” “Because…” “Arin.” “Maybe you--” “Arin.” She laughed, and then so did he, aware that they’d already found the bed. Words had fallen away. Maybe the words lay on the earth, nestled among clothes, curled into the undone dagger belt. Maybe later, language would be recovered and pieced together. Made to make sense. But not now. Now there was touch and taste and sound. When he eased into her, she was glad for the burning lamp, the fuzzy glow of it on his skin. The way it showed the black fall of his wet hair, the flesh and scars that made him. She didn’t look away.

The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor. But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary ... You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals. You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs. My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species.

David’s procession had journeyed through the other side of the city, allowing the opportunity for those who were fortunate to get a glimpse of their future prince. He was clothed like a warrior priest. His long flowing hair was gathered beneath his headdress of gold and ivory. He wore new royal robes of many colored embroidered Phoenician cloth. He wore rings and a necklace of gold and silver embedded with gems. He carried an ornamental bronze sword sheathed to his hip and wore an ephod of linen beneath his robes. A pack of minstrels also led him to the palace with their playing. They arrived at the front entrance to meet Michal’s entourage. When David saw her, his loins burned for her. They had hidden their love for such a long time. They had shared souls in their singing, now they would share their bodies. They would play a concert for their king, Yahweh.

In the other method, the potro, a type of waterboarding (the Inquisition considered waterboarding a form of torture), the victim was tied lying down on a trellis with the head in a depression lower than the feet. The head was bound with an iron band, while tight cords tied the victim’s arms and legs to the trellis. The toca, a linen strip, was stuffed into the mouth. A jar holding about a quart of water dripped onto the toca, slowly saturating it, and thereby giving the victim the impression of drowning. The victim would flail about, but the movements of the limbs only made the restraints, sometimes tightened by tourniquets twisted into the cords, dig into the victim’s flesh. The intensity of the torture session could be measured by the amount of water consumed. A lengthy session would require six or eight jars. The victim, male or female, wore no or minimal clothing during the torture session. Nudity induced shame, but the primary reason for nudity was that clothes interfered with the torture restraints.

him from his goal. If they planned carefully, they could make their escape out into the jungle under the cover of darkness. But only after they had a chance to eat and regain their strength.  When he finished the bath, he found new clothes waiting on a bench: white linen pants and

We combed through Macy’s, cleared out Lord & Taylor, and began exploring Bloomingdale’s. We made long lists of items needed, stores to check out, and hints to convey to the in-laws. There was the Wedding Night Itself, The Day After, and Life in General, which required an exhaustive investigative committee of experienced wedding people that included my aunt – who married off five, my second cousin – seven; and my mother’s former classmate Mrs. Frish and her eleven daughters. Shoes, clothes, lingerie, head coverings, linen – all this needed expert advice on what to buy where, and for how much, and most important of all, how long it would last. Elegant’s linen lasted until at least the third child’s bed-wetting. We weren’t to bother with cheaper brands; they could barely absorb one child’s vomit.

10Who can find350 a woman of worth?a Far beyond jewels is her value. 11Her husband trusts her judgment; he does not lack income. 12She brings him profit, not loss,351 all the days of her life. 13She seeks out wool and flax and weaves with skillful hands. 14Like a merchant fleet,352 she secures her provisions from afar. 15She rises while it is still night, and distributes food to her household, a portion to her maidservants. 16She picks out a field and acquires it; from her earnings she plants a vineyard. 17She girds herself with strength; she exerts her arms with vigor.353 18She enjoys the profit from her dealings; her lamp is never extinguished at night.354 19She puts her hands to the distaff, and her fingers ply the spindle.355 20She reaches out her hands to the poor, and extends her arms to the needy. 21She is not concerned for her household when it snows— all her charges are doubly clothed. 22She makes her own coverlets; fine linen and purple are her clothing. 23Her husband is prominent at the city gates as he sits with the elders of the land.356 24She makes garments and sells them, and stocks the merchants with belts. 25She is clothed with strength and dignity, and laughs at the days to come.357 26She opens her mouth in wisdom; kindly instruction is on her tongue. 27She watches over358 the affairs of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. 28Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband, too, praises her: 29“Many are the women of proven worth, but you have excelled them all.” 30Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting; the woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.359 31Acclaim her for the work of her hands, and let her deeds praise her at the city gates.

Neutrinos could produce an image on cloth?” “Absolutely. A burst of neutrinos emanating from a body would oxidize the cellulose layer in linen and produce the precise negative image of the body upon the cloth. But neutrinos are very weakly interacting particles so nothing else would have been disturbed. Now here comes your Grail and here comes a possible explanation,

Then let’s go.” He tugged her. She resisted. “Oh, I understand.” Sunlight danced in his eyes. “You’re waiting for me to pick you up and carry you.” She sucked in a breath. “You wouldn’t dare.” A hint of a grin snared the corner of his mouth. “Don’t you know you should never dare me? It’s a sure bet I’ll do it.” Before she could protest, he grabbed her around the middle. With one motion he lifted her to his shoulder and hung her there like a sack of seed grain. “Eli Ernest! This is entirely uncivilized.” Her cheeks burned. But not entirely from embarrassment. “No one ever said I was civilized.” She made a halfhearted protest by squirming. The cold wetness from his clothes seeped through the thin layers of her dress and linen chemise. He clamped his arm across her backside. She gasped and grew motionless. The solidness of his arm pushed against the roundness of her flesh. “Your hold is quite indecent.” “Suits me just fine.” He stalked forward with an ease that belied her weight and his exhaustion. “It’s entirely inappropriate.” She couldn’t think past the pressure his arm exerted. “Please, put me down. You’ll cause a scene.” His arm only tightened. “You know how much I like causing scenes.” Her mind whirled, and the heat in her cheeks blazed hotter. “Then you’ll force me to take extreme measures to stop you.” He chuckled. “I’d like to see what you can do.” She took a deep breath, and then, before she lost courage, she sank her fingers into the hair that stuck in wet clumps to the back of his neck. His steps faltered. She combed through the thick locks, letting her fingers brush against the soft skin. “Looks like you’re in need of a haircut,” she said softly, in what she hoped was a seductive voice. He stumbled. Her brazenness shocked even her own delicate ears. But she couldn’t help smiling. Her ploy was working. She brushed her fingers through his hair again, pulling the wet strands up, making sure to trail her fingers across his neck. “I can give you a haircut.” She wrapped a strand around one of her fingers. “If you want.” With a jolt, he stopped. He shifted her and slid her down. When her feet touched the ground, he didn’t let her go but instead pulled her against him. His eyes flashed with a heat she couldn’t begin to understand. “You won.

according to Alamoth; 21Mattithiah, Elipheleh, Mikneiah, Obed-Edom, Jeiel, and Azaziah, to direct with harps on the Sheminith; 22Chenaniah, chief of the Levites, was in charge of the music because he was skillful; 23Berechiah and Elkanah were doorkeepers for the ark; 24Shebaniah, Joshaphat, Nethanel, Amasai, Zechariah, Benaiah, and Eliezer, the priests, were to blow the trumpets before the ark of God; and Obed-Edom and Jehiah were doorkeepers for the ark. The Ark Is Moved to Jerusalem 25With joy David and the elders of Israel and the captains over thousands went to bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord from the house of Obed-Edom.† 26And so it was, when God helped the Levites who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, they offered seven bulls and seven rams.† 27David was clothed with a robe of fine linen, as were all the Levites who bore the ark, the singers, and Chenaniah the music master with the singers. David also wore a linen ephod.† 28Thus all of Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the Lord with shouting and the sound of the horn, with trumpets and cymbals, making music with stringed instruments and harps. 29And it happened, as the ark of the covenant of the Lord came to the City of David, that Michal, Saul's daughter, looked out through a window and saw King David dancing and playing music; and she despised him in her heart.

And now, because of the steadiness of the church they began to be exceedingly rich, having abundance of all things whatsoever they stood in need -- an abundance of flocks and herds, and fatlings of every kind, and also abundance of grain, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious things, and abundance of silk and fine-twined linen, and all manner of good homely cloth. 30. And thus, in their prosperous circumstances, they did not send away any who were naked, or that were hungry, or that were athirst, or that were sick, or that had not been nourished; and they did not set their hearts upon riches; therefore they were liberal to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, whether out of the church or in the church, having no respect to persons as to those who stood in need. 31. And thus they did prosper and become far more wealthy than those who did not belong to their church.

I have to see you in daylight.” His mouth chased lightly, hungrily over her throat and shoulder. “Monisha, you are the most beautiful woman, the most…” His hands moved with increasing impatience, pulling hard at her clothes until a few stitches popped. “Don’t, this dress doesn’t belong to me,” Amelia said anxiously, fumbling to unfasten the borrowed garments herself rather than have them torn. She froze at the sound of footsteps coming along the hallway, passing the closed door without stopping. Most likely it was a servant. But what if someone had seen her entering Cam’s room?… What if someone were searching for her at this very moment? “Cam, please, not now.” “I’ll be gentle.” He lifted her from the circle of discarded clothes. “I know it’s soon after your first time.” She shook her head as he laid her on the bed. Clenching the fabric of her chemise with both hands to keep it in place, she whispered, “No, it’s not that. Someone will find out. Someone will hear. Someone will—” “Let go, hummingbird, so I can take this off you.” There was a flick of devil’s fire in his eyes as he said mildly, “Let go, or I’ll rip it.” “Cam, don’t—” She was interrupted by the sound of rending linen. He had torn it completely down the front, the fragile material drooping on either side of her. “You’ve ruined it,” she said in disbelief. “How am I to explain this to the maid? And how am I to put my corset back on?” Cam didn’t look at all apologetic as he pulled the remnants of the chemise away from her body. “Take off your drawers. Or I’ll have to rip those, too.” “Oh, God.” Seeing no way to stop him, Amelia pulled the drawers down over her hips. “Lock the door,” she whispered with a scarlet face. “Please, please lock it.” A quick smile passed over Cam’s mouth. He left the bed and went to the door, stripping off his jerkin and shirt along the way. After turning the key in the lock, he took his time about returning to the bed, seeming to enjoy the sight of her burrowing beneath the bed linens. He stood before her half-naked, the breeches riding low on his hips. Amelia dragged her gaze away from the sleek, tightly muscled surface of his torso, and shivered between the cold layers of the bedclothes. “You’re putting me in a terrible position.” Cam finished undressing and joined her beneath the covers. “I know other positions you’ll like much better.

She felt some strange yearning, but she couldn't decide what it was for. Not for the city: it seemed like another country to her now, remembered, not felt. She knew if she were there, walking past the market with its glistening stacks of fruit that sometimes rolled onto the pavement, stepping into the pharmacy for overpriced shampoo and body cream, passing the windows full of nice clothes like the clothes she already has (once she got a linen blouse home only to discover that she owned one almost exactly like it), she would be convinced that she could no longer stand to be be away, that she missed it all terribly. But from here that life seemed unreal, like something she saw in a movie. She wondered if that's how her grandparents had managed to leave the old country behind, whether it had ceased to exist as a discernible thing once it was gone along the watery horizon, whether they had told themselves that some day they would come back to reclaim it.

Civilized human beings wear clothes, therefore there can be no portraiture, no mythological or historical storytelling without representations of folded textiles. But though it may account for the origins, mere tailoring can never explain the luxuriant development of drapery as a major theme of all the plastic arts. Artists, it is obvious, have always loved drapery for its own sake—or, rather, for their own. When you paint or carve drapery, you are painting or carving forms which, for all practical purposes, are non-representational-the kind of unconditioned forms on which artists even in the most naturalistic tradition like to let themselves go. In the average Madonna or Apostle the strictly human, fully representational element accounts for about ten per cent of the whole. All the rest consists of many coloured variations on the inexhaustible theme of crumpled wool or linen. And these non-representational nine-tenths of a Madonna or an Apostle may be just as important qualitatively as they are in quantity. Very often they set the tone of the whole work of art, they state the key in which the theme is being rendered, they express the mood, the temperament, the attitude to life of the artist.

change of clothes into linen slacks and sports coat, and some time using my multi-tool to modify a coat hanger into a concealed carry holster, I was striding back out through the hotel lobby with a well-handled .380 stuffed down the side of my pants. The taco shack guy had helped me out with a few other things to complete my ensemble, though he hadn’t at the time realized why I was buying everything. As I went

She heard the door shut and then he was kneeling before her, pushing her dress up to the top of her thighs. In one movement it seemed, he slipped off his jacket, pried open her legs, and lifted her thighs over his shoulders so that she fell back onto her elbows. She gripped the bed linens as his tongue shot into her and rolled expertly about, and when he drew it out to flick at her like butterfly wings while his fingers pressed down inside her, and orgasm climbed within her. He felt it, pushed her farther up the bed, and stood up, looking down with an expression of simple intent at her womanhood. "Not yet," he told her, dropping his clothes to the floor. His body was toned, hard, perfect; she longed to run her tongue over his washboard stomach, the gentle mounds of his pectoral muscles. "Please." The pulsing between her legs was turning to a pounding. He smiled down at her then. He was making her wait of course. He climbed up onto the bed and knelt between her thighs, teasing her with the tip of his manhood. Circling her waist with his arm, he flipped her onto her stomach. He pulled a pillow under her hips and drew her apart. And then... and then nothing. Only the creak of the bed. She expected his touch, but it didn't come. She felt his breath all over her excitement. His chest was obviously flat to the bed, his face almost touching her. He was looking at her, really looking at her, her hairless smoothness, engorged, trembling, and the thrill of it, of knowing he was looking, but not being able to see him looking, the anticipation of being touched, made her body burn and quiver. She felt him breathing against her. She lost track of how long, how long she lay there in a frenzy of anticipation, not knowing would he touch her, would he plunge right into her. She felt her dampness spreading across the pillow beneath her hips. When he did finally touch her, so lightly, just a finger, exploring her, she cried out. It was almost unbearable. And then the creak of the bed again and he filled her. She lifted her hips higher to meet him, and he pushed her dress up higher to take her hips bare in his hands and pull her closer. He ground into her desire like the base of a palm kneading dough, pressing, lifting, pressing, smoothing her with the perfectly timed and pressured movement of a master into something light and delicate and trusting and pliable. He bent one of her legs and lifted the spiked heel of her stiletto so that it dug into his chest, turning in the movement onto her side. Then he slipped her lower leg around his hips without her heel in that foot even touching him and twisted her. Without his having withdrawn even once, she was on her back looking up at him, knees pressed back to her breasts still scooped in her dress. She reached for him, but he shook his head. He wanted to control this. He lifted her stilettoed feet onto his shoulders, and with two parted fingers closed her eyes. He spread her arms. And then he drove himself into her with such force that it hurt. And then again, and again. She could have opened her eyes, pushed him back, regained some control, but something in her wanted this. She had needed for so long to be so strong, so impervious, it felt an incredible relief to have her vulnerable femininity driven home.

10 Items People Forget To Pack When Moving Into A New Home Moving into a new home with your family is the world’s happiest thing. In the excitement of shifting from an old house to a new one, people often forget some of the most obvious and essential items. In this article, I am listing down the 10 most essential items people forget to buy or pack when moving into a new home. Let’s get started. 10 Items People Forget To Pack When Moving Into A New Home 1. Smart Door Lock – This should be your number one priority especially if you have kids and pets. Buy the best smart door lock to keep your loved ones safe. 2. Laundry Basket – Yes, one of the most obvious things that you forgot to pack. This is the last thing that comes to mind when packing, and sometimes it’s completely missed. 3. Extra Bulb – Always keep an extra bulb with you even if all the bulbs in your new home are working fine. You never know when you might need one. 4. Drapes & Curtains – This will help you keep your windows covered if you do not want neighbors peeping inside your home. 5. Extension Cord – Not all your electronic appliances will have long cords. It’s best to have an extension cord handy so that you do not struggle to operate your home and kitchen appliances. 6. Ladder – Reaching your attic or storage space to store your belongings will be easy if you have a ladder with you. 7. Home Cleaning Essentials – Some areas of your home might need cleaning as soon as you shift, especially your living room where you will first gather all your packed stuff to starting arranging them in their correct places. This is when you will need cleaning supplies so that your new home doesn’t look dirty. 8. Wardrobe Hanger – The wardrobe hanger will help you arrange your clothes in a neat manner and will take less space so that you can accommodate more. 9. Kitchen Linens – If you love to walk into a clean kitchen this is a must-have item and you should not forget to pack these. 10. Flashlight – You never know when you might have to use a flashlight so it’s best to have one or two of these handy.

When the soldiers seize him, all his disciples flee. But there is someone else there, “a young man” who is “clothed with a linen cloth over his naked body.” The soldiers grab this unnamed man, but he escapes, nude, leaving them with the linen cloth in their hands (Mark 14:51–52). Who is this person,

And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses”.

But what did he know? What did he really know about the filth, the stench that permeated every pore? He'd seen it of course, they all had. Some of them had been taken there in the early days, others had seen the newsreels. No amount of soap and water could ever cleanse those memories. That's why even now, even though she is in her early nineties, she has to scrub her nails clean, polish every stick of furniture, sweep every inch of floor and constantly wash clothes and linen. You could never be too clean, but being dirty is another matter. Diseases and death are the consequences of dirt

Drew winced. “My back hurts. What did you do to me in your front yard? One minute I was standing, then I was flat on my back in the grass.” “I swept the leg,” she said matter-of-factly. “But why?” “Why not? It’s the fastest way to get someone to the ground.” “But we were standing on your lawn.” “Exactly. We were on nice, soft grass. I would have wrestled you sooner, but it’s not safe on the pavement.” “Do you always wrestle with guys?” “Just the ones I like.” She tapped him on the nose. “Boop.” He tapped her right back. “Boop.” She asked, “Now that I’ve taught you to watch out for the leg sweep, what else can I do for you? Breakfast in bed? Pack you a bagged lunch for work today?” He checked the time on her alarm clock. “It’s Saturday, which is a light day, but I do have a few patients after lunch.” “What do you mean it’s a light day? You’re not fully booked? You must not be a very good dentist. Maybe I should get a second opinion on that cap you glued into my mouth all willy-nilly.” He dropped his jaw in mock outrage. “Not a very good dentist? Those are fighting words, you bad girl.” She raised her eyebrows. “Want to take this back out to the front lawn?” “I think we gave your neighbors enough of a show last night.” “True,” she said. “Plus, we already got grass stains all over one change of clothes.” He wrinkled his nose. “Grass stains.” He groaned. He leaned back, resting his head on Megan’s second pillow, where Muffins normally slept. The sea-foam-green linens were a perfect complement to his skin tone. His brown eyes were a rich chocolate with bright flecks and an inner ring that was nearly green. The sheets had been purchased to complement Muffins, with his orange fur and entirely green eyes, but they looked even better around Dr. Drew Morgan. Drew asked, “What are you thinking about?” He reached up to run his fingers through her tangled morning hair. She normally hated that, but it felt good when Drew did it. “I’m thinking that you look really good in my sheets. You look good in sea-foam green.” “Thanks.” He grinned. “I can’t wait to see how you look in my bed.” “You think you’re going to get me into your bed?” “Sure. I know how it’s done. You just sweep the leg.” “I shouldn’t have told you all my secrets.” Muffins returned and situated himself between them for a bath. Drew propped himself up on one elbow and petted the cat. “So what do I have to do to get you to my place in the first place?” “Reverse psychology works well on me. You could tell me to never come over. You could ban me from your house.” He chuckled. “Whatever you do, don’t show up naked under a trench coat.” “What makes you think I’d show up naked in a trench coat?” “You’re a wild girl. Exactly what I need right now.” “You need me? Are we talking about, like, a medical type of emergency?” “You tell me.” He scooped up Muffins, placed him on the chair next to the bed, and pulled Megan close to him.

44. Paper money is not paper. Take a piece of paper and print (or just write) something on it. Now fold it a few times, place it in your hind pocket, sit on it, take it out, fold and re-fold it some more. How long do you think this piece of paper will last? Will it live up to a month, or even a year? How much do you think will it take before it becomes illegible? In order to make American Dollars last longer, they are printed on cloth, rather than paper. 75% of a dollar bill is cotton, while 25% is linen. This cloth mixture is far more durable than plain paper – life expectancy of an average $1 bill is almost six years. On the other hand, an average $100 bill can live up to 15 years.

the corporal, the small linen cloth on which the Eucharist is placed during Mass, has been seen as symbolic of both the tablecloth at the Last Supper and the burial shroud of Christ.

In an Asiatic (Semitic) settlement (c. 1876–1560 B.C.) that was discovered at Avaris (Tell el-Dab’a), there is a monumental tomb where archaeologists found fragments of a colossal statue of an Asiatic dignitary that had been broken up. The statue had been deliberately destroyed and defaced. The original statue of the seated official was 150% of life size, approximately 2 m high, made of limestone and carved by Egyptian sculptors. This Asiatic man has a red mushroom-shaped hairstyle, yellow painted skin (traditional color of an Asiatic in Egyptian artwork), a long multi-colored cloak (red, white, and black stripes) which is non-Egyptian, and a throw stick (the Egyptian hieroglyph for a foreigner) held against his right shoulder. There is no name on the statue to identify the person, but the size of the statue indicates a person of great importance. Although some have suggested that this is Joseph, a more plausible explanation is that it is Jacob, the patriarch of the family. The clothing on the statue and its color are Asiatic; Joseph was clothed in Egyptian garments of fine linen (Genesis 41:42). The hairstyle on the statue is distinctly Asiatic; Joseph’s hairstyle would have almost certainly been Egyptian given that his brothers did not recognize him when they saw him (Genesis 42:8). Also, a fragment of the statue’s base shows that it was inscribed with the Egyptian word sntr = incense (a word used on funerary inscriptions), which signifies death. The statue was apparently built to commemorate a dead person. The style of the fragments that come from this statue are in harmony with statuary that came from a facility that produced statues during the reign of Amenemhat III, who came onto the throne the year Jacob died (1859 B.C.).34 It makes perfect sense that the statue is made to honor Jacob, who was not buried in Avaris but in Canaan (Genesis 47:29–30, 49:28–30).

Entreri went for the chest of drawers as Jarlaxle moved to the closet. “Poor taste,” he heard the dark elf say, and turned to see Jarlaxle rifling through the hanging clothes, most of them drab and grey. Entreri shook his head and pulled open the bottom drawer, finding some linens, and under them, a small pouch of coins, which disappeared into his pocket.

Revelation 18:11, 14–19 (NLT): The merchants of the world will weep and mourn for her, for there is no one left to buy their goods. . . . “The fancy things you loved so much are gone,” they cry. “All your luxuries and splendor are gone forever, never to be yours again.” The merchants who became wealthy by selling her these things will stand at a distance, terrified by her great torment. They will weep and cry out, “How terrible, how terrible for that great city! She was clothed in finest purple and scarlet linens, decked out with gold and precious stones and pearls! In a single moment all the wealth of the city is gone!

Walt had arrived. He ripped through the enemy line with his bare hands—throwing one rebel magician down the hallway with inhuman strength, touching another and instantly encasing the man in mummy linen. He grabbed the staff of a third rebel, and it crumbled to dust. Finally he swept his hand toward the remaining enemies, and they shrank to the size of dolls. Canopic jars—the sort used to bury a mummy’s internal organs—sprang up around each of the tiny magicians, sealing them in with lids shaped like animal heads. The poor magicians yelled desperately, banging on the clay containers and wobbling about like a line of very unhappy bowling pins. Walt turned to our friends. “Is everyone all right?” He looked like normal old Walt—tall and muscular with a confident face, soft brown eyes, and strong hands. But his clothes had changed. He wore jeans, a dark Dead Weather T-shirt, and a black leather jacket—Anubis’s outfit, sized up to fit Walt’s physique. All I had to do was lower my vision into the Duat, just a bit, and I saw Anubis standing there in all his usual annoying gorgeousness. Both of them—occupying the same space. “Get ready,” Walt told our troops. “They’ve sealed the doors, but I can—” Then he noticed me, and his voice faltered. “Sadie,” he said. “I—” “Something about opening the doors?” I demanded. He nodded mutely. “Amos is in there?” I asked. “Fighting Kwai and Jacobi and who knows what else?” He nodded again. “Then stop staring at me and open the doors, you annoying boy!” I was talking to both of them. It felt quite natural. And it felt good to let my anger out. I’d deal with those two—that one—whatever he was—later. Right now, my uncle needed me. Walt/Anubis had the nerve to smile. He put his hand on the doors. Gray ash spread across the surface. The bronze crumbled to dust.

In March 1810 Louis Simond gave a vivid description of the more normal winter smog: It is difficult to form an idea of the kind of winter days in London; the smoke of fossil coals forms an atmosphere, perceivable for many miles, like a great round cloud attached to the earth. In the town itself, when the weather is cloudy and foggy, which is frequently the case in winter, this smoke increases the general dingy hue, and terminates the length of every street with a fixed grey mist, receding as you advance. But when some rays of sun happens to fall on this artificial atmosphere, its impure mass assumes immediately a pale orange tint…loaded with small flakes of soot…so light as to float without falling. This black snow sticks to your clothes and linen, or lights on your face. You just feel something on your nose, or your cheek,—the finger is applied mechanically, and fixes it into a black patch! 66

Mystic Moon Dreaming Pillows Sometimes, when we are in need of extra rest, or when we just want to reach a deeper sleep state, we can achieve this by the use of dreaming pillows—small sachet like pillows that we can tuck inside of our pillow cases. Depending on the herbs, the pillows can encourage vivid dreams, astral work, or restful sleep. This recipe is designed to help promote peaceful slumber, since so many of us don’t get enough time in bed in this fast-paced world. You will need: 2 seven-inch squares of sturdy, purple material—linen works well Gold thread and needle or sewing machine Cotton batting 1/2 cup each: dried lavender mugwort rose petals lemon balm chamomile valerian root 3 drops lavender essential oil 3 drops lemon essential oil 2 drops rosemary essential oil Small spike of quartz crystal Mix herbs together in a bowl, focusing on your desire to encourage deep slumber and to work with your Higher Self while asleep. Focus on the nature of dreams, how they can solve problems, and ask that this energy infuse the herbs and bring out their natural magical tendencies. Add drops of essential oil and mix again. Place quartz spike in the middle of the herbs and set aside (in a bottle with a lid if you are going to wait to finish this charm). Place cloth pieces together, wrong sides out, and sew to form a pouch (use a 3/8” seam allowance), leaving on side open. Iron seams open, then reverse so pouch is right side out. Fill halfway with cotton batting. Add herb mixture and crystal, then pack with rest of cotton batting. Sew the end shut. Place this inside your pillowcase at night and, before you go to bed, focus on some thought you’d like to explore in the dream-state, then go to sleep as usual. Write down your dreams when you wake up and eventually, you should see them responding to your requests. You can recharge this pillow by adding two drops each of lavender oil, lemon oil, and rosemary oil when the fragrance starts to fade. Remember: It is up to us to solve our own problems, but we can call on the power of our Higher Self when we need help, or when we seek more information on a subject. Eventually, through focus and determination, we can enter the Dream-Time and learn to hear our inner guidance when we’re awake, not just during our sleep.